Desperate Measures
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: What if Collie Entragian hadn't been Tak's first choice? What if he'd tried to stop Desperation becoming unspeakable?


Disclaimer: Desperation and all characters thereof are Stephen King's. Henry and Chris are all mine, baby. I can't possibly explain them effectively in an author's note, but suffice it to say that Henry is a 69 Mustang Mach 1 who talks and drives himself and generally rips off Knight Rider, and Christine Redhart is his driver: she works for a intelligence/law enforcement outfit called VEIL. Chris and Henry are more effectively explained in some of my other fics.

Henry sighed. "Chris," he said, "we got ourselves a cop."

Christine stirred in the driver's seat, glanced in the mirrors. "Fuck. Okay, pull over. Let's see if VEIL can work its magic in a backward state like Nevada."

"Hey, don't diss Nevada," Henry admonished her, slowing. "This is where most of the US's nuclear waste is stored, remember?"

She laughed as the Mustang rolled to a stop. "How could I forget? Hush, here he comes."

She couldn't repress a small gasp at the sight of the cop approaching. He was limping ever so slightly, favoring his left leg....but he was so goddamn _big._ He must be six-six at least, she thought. And all muscle. Still, he had a neck. That was something. He had a neck.

"Ma'am, do you know how fast you were going?" he inquired, leaning...heavily, she thought, as she felt Henry settle around her...on the roof. His voice was dark, she thought inanely. Dark, and musing.

"Seventy, sir," she said mildly, flipping down the sunvisor and handing him her license. 

"VEIL?" he muttered to himself, glancing at the photo and back to Chris. She noticed that he was sweating, his face and neck sheened with it. It wasn't _that_ hot. "I...I'm sorry, Miss Redhart. I failed to notice the license decal."

"S'okay," she said. "Um, Officer...." she peered at his name tag.... "Entragian, could you tell me where the nearest town is?"

He looked, for a moment, as if he was trying hard not to say something. She was very aware of just how big he was. But his bright grey eyes weren't focused on her; he was looking at something a long way away, over the horizon. "I..." he began, and broke off, coughing painfully. She noticed the dark circles under his eyes. "The nearest town with a gas station or any kind of accommodations is Austin. Twenty miles west of here." He coughed again, muffling it behind his fist, but she saw the grey eyes darken in pain.

"Thank you so much," she said, reclaiming her license. He nodded, walked....she found herself wondering what had caused the limp....back to his car.

"That was weird," said Henry.

"No kidding." Chris watched as the dusty cruiser drove away. "Added to the fact that he was trying not to tell me something...or concentrating on something else....he was sick. Really sick. He should be in bed."

"I said this was a messed-up state, didn't I," Henry pointed out. "And I don't much like the road-dust here, it's fucking with my carbs, so let's get moving, okay Chris?"

"Yeah, sure," she said, lighting the engine and pulling them back on the highway. She was distracted; something about this stretch of U.S. 50 was familiar. Henry flicked on his radio; they didn't speak, and the cop's grey eyes stayed in her mind all the way to Austin.

Collie Entragian fished in the glove compartment of his cruiser for the Halls lozenges, took one, wincing at the taste. Keeping Tak out of his mind was draining him, and the scratch in his throat had deepened to a low burning pain in his chest. Tak was wearing him down. There was nothing for it but to keep going, and pray he didn't get delirious. That was the last thing he needed. 

The woman in the Mustang had seemed to help, though. It had been stupid of him to pull her over; he hadn't known why he'd done it, except for her speed—but everyone on this damn road was speeding. He had felt slightly better after talking to her, even for those few moments. 

He coughed, feeling things move in his chest that shouldn't be there, and pulled a graceful U-turn, heading back east towards Ely. Stopping people from entering Tak's domain was all he could do now; Desperation was beyond hope.

Dusk fell over Austin, as Chris lay lazily on a waterbed in a motel room and chainsmoked. She could feel Henry in the back of her mind, half asleep, mulling over the day.

_Chris?_ he asked. 

_Yeah?_

_Chris, did you get a...bad feeling on that stretch of Fifty where we got pulled over?_

Yeah. Real bad. Like poison.

But what the hell was it? Henry asked.

_I don't know. Maybe someone died there._

A whole bunch of someones, he said, shivering. _I think the cop knew it, too. He looked distracted._

He looked worn out, Chris mused. _As if he were trying to do something he had no strength for._

Henry was silent in her mind for a while. 

_It's not our problem_, he said at length, as if to convince himself.

_No. We're on assignment. No time for idle curiosity._

Right, said Henry.

_Why do I get the idea you want to go back there and check it out?_

Maybe I do.

Kyle would be furious, she reminded him.

_Kyle doesn't have to know._

All right, she said. _Fine. We'll go back there first thing tomorrow. Okay? There won't be anything there._

That's what I'm afraid of, said Henry in her mind. 

Collie cut the cruiser's engine, painfully aware that the fuel gage was pegged below Empty. The closest gas station was Austin, twenty miles away. There was gas, of sorts, in Desperation, for the mining vehicles; he had stopped here on the verge to figure out what the hell he was going to do. Tak was aware of him, patrolling the highway. He knew it was only a matter of time before Tak's influence finally closed over his mind, or before his abused body gave up entirely. Either way, he was screwed.

He hadn't slept in three days; hadn't eaten, either, but with the fever singing in his ears he couldn't face the thought of food anyway. The cold that had promised nothing more than a distorted voice and a sore throat had mutated into something that verged on pneumonia. He knew he didn't have much time.

There were no more alternatives. He fired the Caprice's engine again and flicked on his turnblinker, heading left for Desperation.

_You know it's only because I'm in love with you that I'm agreeing to do this,_ said Chris to Henry as she shrugged back into her clothes. _You're a bastard, you know that?_

_And you're my bitch._ Henry laughed in her mind, easily, sweetly. She slid into his driver's seat, fired the engine. 

"What do you expect to find?" she asked aloud, as they sped east.

"I don't know," said HenryHenrythenry, quietly. "I have a really bad feeling about this."

"Yeah," said Chris, "me too." The red Mustang hurtled through the night. She thought vaguely of the grey-eyed cop of that afternoon; she was now doing ninety, easy, and she knew that she wouldn't get off by flicking an ID if they got pulled over. 

In the silent streets of Desperation, Nevada, a single engine fires once, misses, fires again and coughs itself silent.

"Fuck," said Collie Entragian, quietly, desperately. The cruiser had been running on fumes, he knew, but it had picked a supremely bad time to realize it. He was at the blinking yellow traffic light in the center of town. The motor pool was a mile away still. He could feel Tak all around him, sniffing at the cruiser, searching for a way in.

The darkness that filled the cabin was suddenly darker, and Collie had just time enough to cry out before his body was no longer his own.

"Down there. Desperation," said Chris, pointing. Henry snorted aristocratically.

"Sweet name for a town," he said, but he made the turn. This was mining country, Chris knew, and the discomfort that moved in her bones whenever the ground was uneasy stirred in her. 

"Slow down. There's something wrong with this place."

It was black, nightblack. The only light in the entire town was a blinking orange traffic light, the kind they hang at seldom-used intersections. And the moon. The full, yellow moon.

"It's too quiet," Henry muttered. "What happened here? It's like a plague village."

"Shhh," she said. "Look. Over there. Isn't that a cop car?"

Henry's scanners twittered. "It is, and the guy in it is the one who pulled us over this afternoon. You were right, Chris...he's really sick."

"Why's he just sitting there?"

"The tank's empty. He must have run out. Chris, I don't like this."

"No more do I. Let's have a closer look," and Henry nosed out, closing in on the Caprice. The blond cop was hunched over the steering wheel, shuddering.

Chris cursed, started to get out, but what she saw next froze her in place. The cop's body shook in some kind of convulsion; his head jerked back as if electrocuted, and then, seemingly released from whatever had held him, he collapsed bonelessly back in the seat. Something was coming out of his mouth, Chris saw. Was he being sick...?

It was more like smoke. Red smoke. With sparks in it. Chris went cold all over. "Henry--"

"I see it," said the Mustang softly. The smoke poured out of the cop's nose and mouth, and Chris suddenly clutched Henry's steering wheel so hard he gasped; the smoke was....prehensile. It held together in a clump, like an amoeba, and it slipped out through the crack between the Caprice's door and its pillar, and reformed in a cloud over the car. A coyote howled, somewhere close, and the cloud of smoke suddenly vanished.

"Jesus," said Chris. "Oh Jesus. Is he dead?"

"No," said Henry after a moment. "Ill....he's got a high fever, and I don't like what's going on in his lungs...but alive."

Chris bit her lip and got out of the car. She ran to the Caprice's driver's side door, opened it. The cop's eyes were closed, his face white, whiter than it had been this afternoon, and she had thought him pale then....sheened with sweat. His breath came stickily, as if he was drowning. "Officer," she said, urgently. "Officer, can you hear me?"

Collie Entragian opened his eyes, in the dark, and found he was Collie again, and not Tak. He drew a sharp breath, caught it wrong, and coughed; coughing so hard that black stars swam across his eyes and he could hardly breathe. Dimly he was aware that someone was there, someone was helping him out of the dead Caprice and into a different car, this one dark red, somehow comforting. He felt leather upholstery all around him, let himself lie back. There were voices.

Tak, he thought. Tak has got me after all.

But it didn't smell like Tak. It didn't smell like dead carrion exploded in a fury of maggots somewhere far from the sun. It was a smell of leather, motor oil, steel...and something sharper, sweeter, too—like apples, Collie thought. Green apples, and rain.

"Officer?"

He found himself more or less back in his body. He tried to sit up, but hands gently pushed him back down.

"Officer, lie easy. You're not well."

"Where am I?" he asked, trying to sound businesslike and peremptory, and sounding merely hoarse.

"Desperation. My name's Christine. We met this afternoon."

He stared at her, willing the black stars to fade, and made out a pair of dark-blue eyes and a shock of pale hair. The woman he'd pulled over. He realized that the car he lay in was her hot-shot Mustang. "What.....Oh. God. I've got to go back...."

"No," she said, autocratically. "Jesus Christ, you can hardly walk. What happened to you? What was that thing?"

It occurred to Collie that she meant Tak, and in that case she was likely to believe him......

He told her everything. The China Pit, the way Cary Ripton had grown, and dissolved, as if he was being used up; the way Tak had jumped to Josephson, to Wyler, to Carver....

She believed. He had to stop several times in the telling because he was coughing too hard to be understood, but she believed. When he had finished, she nodded slowly, then turned to face the empty driver's seat. "Henry, do we have any penicillin?"

"Yeah. There's some codeine too. In the kit, under the spare."

The woman was gone, and returned with things that gleamed under the Mustang's domelight. Collie felt a prick in the great vein in his elbow, and then she was pressing something against the skin. "Hush," she said as he turned his head to look at her. "Can you swallow pills, Officer?"

"I think so. Call me Collie, by the way, since we're all going to die. Who are you? Why are you doing this?"

"I don't know," she said simply, handing him a collection of tablets and a bottle of water. He took them, wincing at the pain in his throat. 

"What are you going to do?"

"Where'd you say this mine was?"

Someone was carrying her. She felt the rocking, slightly off-balance rhythm of someone walking with a limp, felt her head rest against someone's chest, heard his breath rasp in his throat. She couldn't remember where she was; her last clear memory was of Austin, and the motel room. Opening her eyes on the blue darkness of dawn, she suddenly remembered everything.

Collie set her down in Henry's driver's seat, and then had to lean on the roof of the car as he coughed helplessly. She had to admit that he looked a hell of a lot better than he had last time she'd seen him, however. There was something new in his eyes. Eyes that were, she thought randomly, exactly the light grey color of cigarette smoke in rain.

"Your gun," she said, stupidly. "I must have dropped it. Where are we?"

"The China Pit," said Collie, catching his breath with an effort. "Or what used to be the China Pit. It collapsed."

"I think I had it in my hand," said Chris. "Your gun. I'll go back and look..."

"Will you forget the damn gun!" shouted Collie. "It doesn't matter! It's probably buried under a thousand tons of shattered hornfels. I thought you...._we_ thought you were, too." He knelt down by the open driver's door, looking at her. "What did you do to it?" he asked her, softly. "What did you do to Tak?"

"I don't even remember," she said, shaking her head to clear it. "There was the cave-mouth....Henry helped me. He saved me. Us. Then I blew up the pit with dynamite, and your gun. I could have sworn I had...." She looked about her for a service .38.

"Forget the gun," said Collie. "I don't care. I've never used it. I..." he began and stopped. "You didn't have to go in there. You could have just kept on driving. You did something I don't understand. Forget the gun. Okay?"

She sighed. He began to cough, muffling it behind his fist—but it went on too long, and there were tears standing in his eyes and his face was flushed when he finally stopped. She heard him mutter "Damn" with his hand pressed to his chest, and she reached out limply and laid the back of her hand against his cheek. He was hot, too hot, but not burning. But he needed help.

"You ought to be in a hospital," she said. He looked up at her, wiping his eyes.

"Nonsense. I'm fine. It's just a cold."

Chris snorted in disgust. "Get in." She closed her door.

"Where are we going?" Collie collapsed into the passenger seat. 

"Anywhere. Far away from here. Henry, could you drive? I don't think I'm capable."

"I think so," said the Mustang, tiredly. She glanced at the cop, saw in his eyes nothing more ominous than fever and fatigue.

"You....know?"

"Yeah," he said, without looking at her. "At first I thought I was delirious....but I've seen enough crazy shit in the past few days. I can believe this." He coughed again, hackingly, the sound like stones rattling in his chest. Chris reached over, slid an arm around him, supporting him as the paroxysm bent him over. When he could breathe again, she didn't take her arm away immediately, and Collie was content just to lie there with his eyes closed and think of nothing.

They were back on Highway 50 before Collie sat up alertly. "Wait. I...What are we doing?"

"Going to the police," said Chris. "At least I'm going to the police. You're going straight to a hospital."

"I told you, this is just a cold," he said, stubbornly. She sighed, looked at him. They could both hear his breath click and wheeze in his chest.

"Do you often have colds like this?"

Collie looked at her, and gave up. "No. But it started as a cold, at least...I haven't slept for three days. Four, now. I haven't eaten or drunk anything for longer than I care to think. I couldn't stop....if I left off patrolling, someone might have gone to Desperation, and...."

"I know," she said. "You did way more than you had to do. Drink water, and sleep. We'll be in Ely soon."

She felt Collie's grey eyes on her, and turned to face him, holding her head a little to one side and letting the corners of her mouth quirk ever so slightly upwards. She was rewarded by a slight widening of the grey eyes, and another fit of coughing. Henry sighed deeply.

"Leave the poor man alone," he said, over Collie's coughing. "He's in no condition to withstand your feminine wiles."

"Shut up, darling," she said mildly, thwacking Henry's dash. 

"Ouch."

The last thing Collie remembered before sliding into darkness was the sound of Chris's laughter.

"Officer Entragian?"

Collie opened his eyes. For a long, horrible moment he thought he was back in Desperation—but the voice was familiar, and he found himself looking into a pair of dark-blue eyes, and he remembered everything. The woman. The crazy, infuriating, fascinating woman.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Fine," he said automatically, but she quirked an eyebrow at him, and he sighed. "Okay; not fine, godawful. How long have I been here?"

"Three days. They say you're out of danger, if that's any consolation."

"It's not." Collie scowled at her. "What did you tell them?"

"What they'd believe," said Chris, quietly, sitting down by the bed. Collie raised himself on an elbow in order to see her better, and the effort started him coughing. He saw, absently, that Chris's face was white, and there was a pinched, pained look about her he didn't like at all.

"What's wrong?" he asked her when he could speak.

"Nothing," she said, hurriedly. "—I told them that we'd driven into Desperation, or I had...you don't come into the story just yet...in search of gas, and I found the place like it was, with everyone dead. The phones had been cut. I thought obviously that there had been some kind of bizarre killing spree, and on my way out to find a phone that worked and call the cops, I found you." She broke off, scowling fiercely at Collie as he started to speak. "You had been on patrol when the killer struck, up and down 50, despite a nasty cold, and you had been frantically trying to find and stop the killer when you collapsed. Two days in the desert night turned the cold into pneumonia. I got you into my car and rushed you to the hospital."

"No mention of the mine?"

"None."

"Good," said Collie. "They bought it?"

"Entirely. You're a hero, you know. They can't think how you managed to stay on your feet as long as you did, as sick as you were. Real hero stuff."

"Oh, God," he said, disgustedly. "I can't believe this. Any of it."

"I'm having issues believing it myself," she admitted. He saw that some of the pinched look had faded from her face—but she was still a long way away, and he saw her lips drain of blood as he started to cough again. She looked...in pain, Collie thought, as if....

"I've got to go," she said, suddenly, rising. "I'm on assignment. I'm already a week behind schedule." He saw something unidentifiable flicker in her eyes as she turned away, heard the door bang angrily behind her. He was totally unprepared for the flood of emotion that rose at the thought of her leaving. It hadn't occurred to him that she still had a job....was not of this place....was not of his world.

Don't be silly, he told himself. She's a stranger, nothing more.

But he knew, even as he rolled over and stared at the dripstand that lurked beside his bed, watching the straw-colored fluid as it trickled into his bloodstream, that he was lying.

*****

"Are you sure you're..."

"I'm fine," Collie snapped at the cop they'd partnered him with. The Ely PD was affiliated with the Desperation cops, and it had been an easy transition for him. Two weeks out of hospital, on sick leave, and he was back in a dusty Caprice cruiser....but nothing was the same. The other cop, an unobtrusive individual named....Collie searched his memory....Smith, Derek Smith, had been in awe of him ever since they'd met. The Ely PD had apparently thought it would be nice of them to partner Smith with his hero. Collie wished they hadn't. He was still coughing; the doctors had warned him that the cough might stick around for weeks—and every time he coughed, or leaned against something, or closed his eyes, Smith would inquire earnestly if he was okay. His limp wasn't helping matters, either. He thought absently that he was lucky he hadn't damaged his left knee again, back in Desperation....

He pushed it out of his mind. There were more important things to think about. Dropping the cruiser's transmission into drive, he pulled out of the station parking lot, slipping out into traffic.

An hour went by, uneventfully. No one in Ely was in the mood to run red lights, or perhaps the sight of the lightbars on his roof was preventing them, but nothing struck his eye until the radio suddenly crackled and spat static into the dusty silence. Smith jumped. 

"Unit 35, we have a possible ADW at Number 23 Poplar Street North," the dispatcher informed them. Collie glanced at Smith, who hurried to pick up the handset. 

"Uh, this is Unit 35, responding to ADW at 23 Poplar, ten-four," he said, nervously. 

"Ten-forty, Unit 35," said the dispatcher, and there was another crackle of static. Collie ignored it as he made a neat U-turn and flicked on the roof flashers, speeding up. Poplar was one of the richer streets in Ely, populated almost exclusively by people who drove large shiny Ford Explorers and had children named Caitlin or Shane; Collie's own apartment was, by contrast, in the '87 Buick Skylark area of town. He pulled the cruiser to a stop in front of a split-level with, surprisingly enough, an Explorer sitting fatly in the driveway, and cut the engine. He wondered how Smith would deal with a crime scene.

Fairly well, apparently. He dealt with the weeping suburban mother and children with admirable aplomb, leaving Collie free to talk to the victim. The EMTs had come, and they were sitting around on the front steps, waiting for him to conclude his interview so that they could make a report.

The victim was a thirty-something example of a species Collie thought of as Suburban White Male; softening around the belly, steel-rimmed glasses, hair beginning to show the onset of migration. He also sported a large and unsightly lump over his left ear, to which the EMTs had applied a dressing. 

"It was Dennis," he kept saying. "Dennis."

"Take it easy," Collie told him, sitting down on the concrete stoop and pulling out his notebook. "Sir, do you know the man who did this to you?"

"He's my best friend," said the victim, confusedly. "I don't understand this."

"How did it happen?"

"I....I was out back, lighting the barbecue. We were going to have a picnic. The steaks are still out there, they'll spoil...."

"Never mind the steaks, sir. Can you tell me exactly what you remember?" Ah yes, Collie thought, that bastion of suburban existence, the barbecue. I bet he's got an apron that says Meat the Chef....

What the hell's wrong with me? This guy just got beat over the head by a blunt object. Why am I feeling so damn hostile towards him? 

Collie's head hurt. He focused his attention firmly on the victim, who was thinking out loud. "—and there was someone behind me. I thought it was Linda...my wife...and I turned around, you know, and Dennis was right there with this big piece of wood..."

"Who is Dennis?"

"Dennis Pryor. My best friend. Or he was....We used to have a couple, weeknights, down at the Green Door. We'd talk about the goddamn railroad. I don't get this."

"You're positive it was this man Pryor?"

"Yeah, only the funny thing was....he was bigger."

Collie felt as if the world was reeling around him. Cary Ripton had been bigger. Josephson.... Wyler.....Carver....

"Officer? Are you okay?"

The Suburban Male was looking at him curiously. He rubbed at his temples, willing the world to settle back into place. He felt drunk.

"Bigger," he repeated.

"I know how crazy that sounds, and maybe it's just that I got hit on the head, and I'm remembering shit that didn't happen, but he looked bigger than he normally was. Like he'd grown four or five inches, and gained sixty pounds. His clothes were too small."

Jesus.

They hadn't killed it after all.

They hadn't....

Collie's dizziness came back in a sudden nauseous rush. He felt the dry summer heat catch in his healing lungs like broken glass. They hadn't killed it.....

He staggered to his feet, already coughing, pressing his hands to his mouth to stifle it, aware of how he looked but unable to help himself. Reaching out blindly, he came up against the Caprice, and leaned against its warm bulk with his hands braced on his knees and coughed until his head swam and black flowers were blooming in front of his eyes. Voices rose around him; he felt hands on his shoulders, the coldness of a mask on his face, the metal-sour taste of oxygen. The EMTs, he realized vaguely. He was lifted, jolted; the world went fluorescent-pale, and he couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't see.... The last thing he remembered before sliding away was the image of Cary Ripton—a bigger Cary Ripton—stepping out of his beat-up Ford truck, with a shotgun in his hand.

"But what caused it?"

"We don't know. He was interviewing the victim when it happened....I thought he was dying or something."

_I wasn't dying_, Collie thought indignantly. _Jesus, I'm back in the hospital, and we didn't kill it...it's still here...._

Pain trickled through him as he came more fully awake. _We don't know how many it's got to. And how do we....no,_ he corrected himself mercilessly, _how do _I_ stop it? If dropping a goddamn mountain range on it wasn't enough...._

"I think he's coming round," one of the voices said. Dutifully, Collie opened his eyes. The Chief and one of the EMTs stood by the bed.

"Entragian, what the hell happened?" demanded the Chief. Collie thought fast.

"I...I guess I'm not quite ready for duty yet, sir," he coughed, partly for effect. The Chief and the EMT exchanged a glance.

"What did he say to you? Was it something he said that...." The Chief waved his hand in an expansive gesture. Collie shook his head.

"No. I don't remember what he was saying," he lied. "I just...felt very strange all of a sudden." That much was true.

The EMT glanced at the Chief, took him aside. Collie laced his fingers behind his head and regarded the ceiling, trying to think what on earth he could do. They were talking quietly, by the window. He caught the phrase "—temporary relapse....working too hard...stress-related...."

By the time they came back, Collie had run over the entire scenario in his mind four or five times, and had come no closer to an answer. He wanted Chris to be there; she was the only other one alive who understood, who believed, who knew what Tak could do....

"Entragian," said the Chief. "You're obviously not fit for duty yet. The doctors said you're pushing yourself too hard. I'm putting you on another two weeks' sick leave."

Collie nodded, tiredly. "Did we get him, sir?"

"Get....oh, the perp from the Poplar call? No, he's still at large. From what we learned from the victim, the assailant was a friend of his. Did you know him?"

"No, sir," said Collie.

God, he wanted Christine to be there. She hadn't known what to do any more than he had, but she had done it all the same...and he honestly had felt better when she was around, irrational as it was. 

He rolled over on his side, furious at his weakness, at the pain in his lungs, the constant rattling itch that made him cough and tore his throat to ribbons. He was helpless. Collie had never been helpless, as far as he could remember; he had been ill before, of course, but only kid stuff like measles and chicken pox, and an occasional weekend bout of flu; nothing as insidious and long-lasting as this. He hated it; it embarrassed him, although he wouldn't have admitted it; and, sometimes, it frightened him. At night, when he woke himself up coughing so hard he couldn't breathe, as his throat closed and his chest heaved in the desperate need for air, he found himself wondering if one time the cough wouldn't let up; if he really couldn't breathe, and he'd die of suffocation, alone, in the dark....

Lighten up, he told himself, annoyed. You're not going to die, for Chrissake, you're just sick. 

Yeah, but it's high time I should get better.

You will, he said to himself, but even in his mind the tone was hollow and unconvinced.

Chris paced irritably. Seven in the morning and it was already too fucking hot, and her shirt was sticking to her, and the clerk was helping himself to a long easy eyeful of what was so clearly displayed beneath the damp white cotton. Why was it taking so long? The computer had already disgorged her credit card; the receipt was printed out, her luggage was piled on the floor beside her, and this asshole was just sitting there staring at her chest....and she was in a hurry. Jesus, some people....

_Don't blame him,_ said Henry in her mind. _Just because you're still carrying a torch, because you're still worrying and because you're anxious to get out of here, that doesn't give you the right to bitch at everyone else._

With an effort, Chris stopped herself from yelling at him. _I am not carrying a torch. What the hell are you talking about?_

You know perfectly well. Get the receipt, collect your luggage, and stop being silly.

Chris must have let some of what she was feeling show in her eyes and in her stance, because the clerk's gaze flickered from her breasts to her face and widened briefly before dropping to the computer again. She tacked a smile on her face as she took the card and the receipt from his fingers and picked a suitcase up in each hand, elbowed her way through the glass doors of the hotel, and got into her car.

_Don't fume,_ said Henry in her mind. _Yell, if it makes you feel better._

"Goddamn it!" shouted Chris. "Don't patronize me, and don't tell me I'm being silly. I don't believe what I did in that little hell town; I don't believe I tipped that fucking waiter six dollars when all he did was bring me a cup of coffee..."

"And he was tall and blond and had grey eyes...." said Henry evenly.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Chris spat, wrenching at the ignition. Henry's engine shuddered into life, and they pulled away from the curb and the people staring at the crazy woman yelling at nothing. "Don't you start bitching at me too! I've had more than enough of that. I am _not_ carrying a torch, as puerile as that idiom is, and I am _not_ worried. Maybe you need your circuits overhauled, Henry. You're not making much sense."

Henry was silent, revealing his anger and hurt through the uneven knocking of the engine. Chris hadn't been thinking last time she filled up, and the gas he was tasting now was far too low-octane—and she'd warmed up the engine by revving it angrily, and he wasn't, consequently, feeling good. Twenty miles down the road, Chris's temper had cooled, and she let up on the accelerator and allowed them to slow to sixty-five, and Henry felt her fingers, gentle again, caress his wheel.

"I'm sorry," she said, quietly. "I didn't mean that. Any of it. Are you all right?"

"Yes," said Henry, wearily. He knew she felt the low ache of the engine too, and knew she really was sorry, and her gentle massage of the wheel and the dash was making him feel better. 

"You were right. You always are. But there's nothing I can do about it."

"You could tell him," said Henry, softly.

"I don't think he'd care." The bitterness in Chris's voice cut him to the quick.

"Wrong again."

They didn't speak for another sixty miles or so, and Chris hadn't refuted that last statement, and she didn't protest when Henry turned onto U.S. 50, heading towards Ely.

They'd let him out again. Collie paced the floor of his little apartment, racking his brains for a strategy....any strategy...a starting point...?

He was feeling better. That was something. He'd caught sight of himself, shaving, in the bathroom mirror—and had looked at his reflection for the first time in days, shocked at his appearance. He'd lost weight, and there were dark shadows around his eyes that hadn't been there, and he looked tired. Deadly tired. But he was feeling better. He could breathe more easily, and the fever was gone; all that remained was the deep baritone cough that started deep in his chest and burned its way up his throat, like a living thing. The cough came and went; sometimes he didn't encounter it for days at a time, and sometimes it was constant.

He dropped into a chair. Dennis Pryor, thirty-two, account executive for a small computer company based in Ely. No wife; one longtime lover, now out of the picture. Missing since the day before the attack on Poplar Street.

The victim at Poplar had recovered, although had Pryor not been surprised by the arrival of a UPS delivery man, he would be six foot under at this moment. The weapon had been a two-by-four that had been lying around the Poplar household for days, since the homeowners had done some renovations to the left elevation. Nothing there. Pryor had worn gloves, but the victim had made a positive ID, and that was all they had to go on.

Collie was still trying to remember exactly what the scene at Poplar Street had been when the doorbell rang, and he jerked out of a brown study. Christ, he thought. Not Smith _again_?

He opened his door and was not entirely surprised to be looking down at the top of Chris's head.

She looked up at him.

"You," he said.

"Can I come in? I've got to talk to you."

Wordlessly Collie stood aside, let her in. She was wearing dark jeans and a white tank top that was a little too thin for heat like this: he could see her nipples, sweat-ringed, clearly defined beneath the pale cloth. Yet she looked ice-cold.

"What is it? " she asked him. "What's happened?"

"It's come back," he said tonelessly. "We didn't kill it."

"What?" Chris stared at him, her eyes wide and mirror-like.

"We didn't kill it. I don't know how. Someone was attacked by his friend...or something that looked like his friend plus four inches and sixty pounds."

"God," said Chris, shivering. She looked at him closely. "Did it...I mean, are you...."

"No," said Collie, and looked away. "When I found out, I...lost it. They put me back in the hospital, and then on two weeks' sick leave."

Chris thought of Collie 'losing it'; it would have to have been, she considered, something pretty damn traumatic. She couldn't stop herself reaching up to feel his forehead.

Annoyed, he batted her hand away. "I'm fine. It was a momentary lapse."

Chris's face tightened. She turned away, sat down in a chair. "Men," she said almost sadly. "You really are all the same, you know. You pretend nothing can get to you, nothing hurts, nothing can scare you shitless. It's unconvincing, and it's counterproductive, and it's stupid." She regarded the table.

Collie, moved by this charming speech, felt an urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her thoroughly; however, in the interests of civility, he refrained, and settled for an exasperated glare. The effect was rather spoiled by a heavy fit of coughing. Damn, he thought. I thought this part was over with.

Chris sighed, got up and went into his tiny kitchenette. Dimly, he heard her clattering about, opening and closing cupboards. A faucet was running. He was still coughing, hard, and his head was beginning to sing dizzily. This was one of the worst paroxysms he'd ever had. A red-hot fist was closing about his throat—he couldn't catch his breath, couldn't stop, couldn't see through the wavering black sunbursts in front of his eyes. He was suddenly frightened. The terrible sinking knowledge that he wasn't going to be able to breathe ever again came over him, and he collapsed into the chair, his wrecked knee giving way, choking, helpless. 

Chris was there. She set a glass of something down on the table, and she came to him and she sat on the arm of his chair and she took him in her arms. Her body was all wiry strength against his shuddering weakness, her touch was sure and cool. She began to rub his back with long rhythmic strokes, deeply, soothingly, rocking him back and forth with the motion of her hands, and Collie was too far gone to care when she let his head rest against her shoulder, and her hand crept up to stroke the curve of his neck. Slowly, with the rhythm of her massage and the steady support of her arms, the frantic desperation began to leach from him, his throat relaxed, he found he could gasp in breath between the spasms of coughing. She let him lie back in the chair, keeping one hand around his shoulders, and the other hand gently stroking his chest, tracing the contours, cool against his hot skin. Collie's breath came easier, until at last he was able to swallow the cough and collapse, exhausted, drained, against the cushions.

After a long, empty moment he felt strong enough to open his eyes.

She was still there, sitting on the arm of the chair, not looking at him. The white, pinched look was back on her face. Reaching out, she picked up the glass from the table, full of some cold pale-golden liquid, and gave it to him. "Drink this," she said quietly. "It will help."

He took it, tasted it. Lemon, and something he couldn't identify...something that tasted of smoke. It was ice-cold, and it numbed some of the pain in his raw throat, and something about Chris's presence and the quiet, questionless way she was dealing with him began to make him feel better. 

He closed his eyes again, spent. He was disgusted with himself, of course. What an exhibition. But she had said nothing, done nothing to indicate that she was aware of it....

When he looked around again, she was gone. There was a note on the table.

_I'm sorry,_ it said in an elegant if scribbled hand. _I won't bother you again. _

Collie slammed a fist down on the tabletop, and the empty glass jumped off and shattered on the floor. He felt suddenly like crying, and passed a hand over his face, willing himself calm. She couldn't leave. She couldn't. She was the only other one who knew....

She was the only one......

"Days Inn, Rhonda speaking, how may I help you?"

"Do you have a Christine Redhart registered with you?" said Collie into the phone.

"Redhart....Redhart...." He heard the sound of Rhonda's nails clicking against her computer keyboard. "Yes, I'm showing a single night's reservation for a C. Redhart, sir. Is there a message..?" she asked the dial tone. 

Collie replaced the receiver, calmly. The sixth and last motel in Ely. Always the last place you look. But at least she hadn't left. Yet.

He found that part of his mind, the colder and less enthusiastic part of it, was questioning the wisdom of this undertaking. Leave, it said. Get the hell out of Ely. Out of Nevada. Go live in Ohio or someplace, someplace far away. Forget the woman, forget Tak, just get the hell away from here.

And yet, Collie had always been a man who followed his instincts, his hunches, his unreasonable and unsolicited ideas, and the need to find Christine was the strongest instinct he'd ever had. He sighed, for a long moment wishing he'd stayed in Wyoming with that other mining company...

Christine didn't often indulge in torrential fits of weeping, but when she did, it was spectacular. She lay now, spent, on the motel bed in Ely; the curtains were drawn, the chain on the door, and she was alone in the hot dusk. Tomorrow she would leave; drive away, past Desperation, along that dead stretch of Route 50, heading east, heading home. 

God, she thought, feeling the tears start again. Someone was pounding on her door.

"Go away," she said.

The pounding continued, harder now. Chris rolled off the bed, wiping her wet face, prepared to yell at whoever it was, and opened the door.

"Jesus Christ, don't ever do that to me again," said Collie, scowling fiercely at her. 

She looked up at him, suddenly aware of how she must look; her eyes were sore, red, puffy, her face was blotched and stained with tears. "What do you want?" she asked, thickly.

Collie made an inarticulate sound and grabbed her by her shoulders, and pulled her to him, and kissed her until her head swam.

Later, much later, as the sun was throwing long blue shadows across the parking lot, Chris woke to find Collie's arm curled around her as he slept, and she smiled for the first time in weeks. What she had never even admitted to herself that she longed for had come to pass, and it seemed suddenly as if nothing was impossible for her, as if Tak was nothing more than a beetle wandering over the bedclothes that she could pick up in her fingers and crush silently to death....

Collie shifted, and woke. For a moment he didn't know where he was, but the sweet-sharp fragrance of apples and rain filled the room, and he found himself lying by Chris, feeling alive and strong again. Recalled to life, he thought absently, and laughed a little.

She turned lazily in his arms, and looked up at him. "Mmmm?" she inquired.

"Nothing," he said. "You're good, you know that?"

"Nothing but the best." She stretched like a cat, slid out of the bed, magnificently naked, and parted the curtains. "Jesus, it's evening already."

Collie pulled the sheet over his head, hiding from the light; his eyes were accustomed to the dimness of the room. She flicked the curtains closed again and came back to the bed, propping pillows against the headboard, regarding the ceiling with utter satisfaction. He reached a lazy hand out and traced the long white scar over her right shoulder. 

"What made this?"

"A clever doctor," she said mildly. "I'd ripped muscles there, and they had to go in and sew bits of me together again." He began to knead the curve of the shoulder, his fingers pressing against the muscles beneath, exploring.

"It's all knotted," he said. "You're tense."

"Not right now I'm not," she said, sliding down the headboard to lie against him again. "Speaking of scars, what did you do to your knee? I've been wondering for a long time now."

"The China Pit," he said into her hair. "I was working for Diablo Mining, back then, and I was driving a pickup down the access road when it....twisted, underneath the wheels. They said later it was a landslide or something, but they weren't in that truck when it flipped."

"Jesus," she said, softly. He sighed.

"I got workman's comp out of it, at least," he told her. "I needed it, too....I was in the damn rehab clinic for months. They still don't think they've fixed it right, and they're constantly pestering me to let them go back in there and play with it some more." He extracted the knee in question from the bedclothes, regarding it sourly. The joint itself was misshapen, and pale shiny scars crisscrossed the flesh around it. Chris made a soft sound of sympathy.

"It's all right," he assured her. "It hardly hurts at all, now, and I can walk, more or less. It's not pretty, though."

She laughed a little, reaching out and running her fingers over the scars. "I'd say striking rather than pretty." Her eyes were half-closed, her lips parted a little, her short pale hair rumpled and untidy. She looked utterly and irresistably kissable, and Collie didn't even try to resist the urge. Her hands crept up, her fingers running through his short hair, her body rising against his own.

"So what the hell do we do?" she asked him, some time later, walking back from the shower with a large white motel towel wrapped around most of her. He was still lying in the bed, more or less, his fingers laced behind his head. 

"I wish I knew."


End file.
